First, let me thank Communispace for inviting me to be a guest blogger. I think I’ll ask Diane to return the favor on my blog in the near future.
Now the topic…
People who are involved with listening approaches (mining conversations in blogs, managed communities, etc.) get a little frustrated sometimes; they ask me for guidance of how to sell listening.
Here is my advice; don’t think of this as research. Think of it as process reinvention.
For example, consider how an organization might reinvent its innovation process. How could any informed marketer, when rethinking innovation in an era of social media, NOT integrate listening into the innovation process? Listening is about hearing what people rather than the marketer wants to talk about, and hearing it in people’s own words. It’s a window in the mind, heart and emotions of people, one you need to have your nose pressed up against continuously. Because things change…really fast…giving agile marketers great opportunities leaving traditional marketers wearing the WTF happened look on their faces.
Traditionally, research has been at the fuzzy front end with qual and downstream with volumetric concept or concept/product testing. Listening is about realizing that things change constantly. Consumer needs are not linear and scheduled, they change at any time. If there is no linear process, there is no fuzzy front-END; this is continuous and listening is essential. Your concept testing must morph into learning experiments instead of magic number idea killers. If you missed the action standard, learn why. Is the underlying premise wrong or the idea impractical from a business point of view? If not, keep working at; if yes, move on.
Now it gets even crazier. Innovation is not just about creating new “things” with new features. Brands are experiences and the innovation might come from a connection made via social media. For Unilever’s Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, the innovation is in the media—creating social media environments, videos, and events that were intended to change people’s concept of beauty in a way that would enhance female self-esteem. It was a great and innovative thing to do and not a new SKU in sight!
Now if the fuzzy front end is really a continuous backdrop requiring listening, it also means that there is little difference between new product innovation and existing brand sense and respond. It’s all about a marketer intersecting their assets with emerging needs to serve people—add value to daily human life—who cares if you do that via media, new products, or rethinking your existing brand? It’s about the need, not your brand management structure.
In an era when 300 million or more are on Facebook, where word of mouth is becoming one of the most trusted sources of advice, and where people love sharing their feelings online in communities, how can a marketer not want to tap into this constant and organic flow of conversations?
IMHO, that’s how you sell listening.
To learn more about how to become an agent of change for your organization regarding listening, come to the ARF’s workshop on Jan 28th in San Francisco, “Putting Listening to Work”. All attendees will also receive a copy of our just published book, “The ARF Listening Playbook” which contains 35 great success stories that wouldn’t have happened without listening.
On my way to a recent conference, a stranger standing next to me in the elevator posed that question to me. Sometimes it’s the off-occurrences in life that stick with you and I’ve been contemplating the question ever since.
In both developed and developing countries, birth rates are generally dropping, life expectancies are increasing, the average age at which women have their first child is also increasing, and the needs of the “sandwich generation”—those people concurrently caring for children and elderly parents—are of growing interest to marketers. So when we planned our corporate research agenda at the start of 2009, we thought some exploration as to how this squeezed demographic was thinking and coping could be useful, especially to our clients in financial services, health care, and insurance.
We learned that the sandwich is not a sandwich. The “squeeze” is not exerted or experienced equally. People are not stressed because they’re caring for kids and parents; it’s because they’re caring for parents and in-laws, period. But we also learned that the “burden” carries intrinsic rewards, that caring for elderly relatives yields moral clarity, a sense of purpose, opportunities to teach and model values for their children, and moments of surprising joy. And we were overwhelmed by the unmet needs that surfaced, by the opportunity for brands across industries to provide products and services that help care for aging parents, now and in the future.
Colleen Finnerty 
Ted Morris 
In July, I tweeted about the Pomegranate:
Steve 
I agree with you. Not only is Ben Franklin one of my personal idols, but most certainly Ben Franklin was the original hacker and blogger http://blog.bos.genotrope.com/2007/08/14/ben-franklin-was-a-hacker/
Very good point! And some have described his aphorisms in “Poor Richard’s Almanack” as the first tweets. Truly an amazing man.